2

On the last day Corey saw his grandfather, the old man paid a late-night visit. He chose not to wake the boy. Corey looked like an angel in his sleep. His feet already stuck out from the end of the bed at age twelve. Papou smiled sadly. Twelve years of foot growth and laughter and pizza and hide-and-seek and crazy discussions. Twelve years that his dear wife, Maria, had never known.

He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t think about her now.

Over the years he’d pummeled his grief into a lump buried deep in his heart. He’d trained himself not to think about that sunny September day in 2001, when a jet plane that sounded like the end of the world stole those years from Maria.

And now he was about to lose Corey too.

As Papou carefully wrote a note, the pen dropped from his hand and clattered to the bedroom floor. He was tired, but his grandson was tireder, if there was such a word. The noise didn’t wake Corey. Not a bit.

His face etched with sadness, Papou watched the boy as he mumbled in his sleep—garbled words mostly, but Papou could make out one clear sentence: “Is that you, Oliver?”

Oliver?

It had been a couple of years since they’d played Oliver and Buster Squires, Gentlemen of the Distant Past from the Town of Twit. They would crack each other up so much that Corey’s mom would scold them both. By now, Papou thought Corey had grown out of that game.

Not a chance.

Papou leaned close. “Indeed, Buster,” he whispered, “but we must have a good night’s sleep, in order to retain the quality of our sweet body odor.”

Corey smiled and let out a giggle. As his lips settled downward, he began to snore. Papou ran his fingers lightly through his grandson’s dense thicket of hair. During the daylight it danced with every shade from amber to chocolate, but in the darkness it was jet-black. He knew that his grandson hated that hair now, but Corey would grow to love it someday.

Papou did not like thinking about someday. Only today. And today, his time had come.

People said time stopped for no man. It was an arrow. It marched on. It would always tell. But that was nonsense. None of those things was true.

Papou had learned this the hard way.

He kneeled and picked up the pen he’d dropped. His fingers weren’t what they used to be. Before long he wouldn’t be able to write at all. Placing the pen back on Corey’s desk, he glanced at the note he’d written:

Dear Corey,

You look so peaceful, I don’t want to wake you. Sorry, but I was called away to Canada—an emergency with one of my close friends from college. I may stay for a while. So sorry I couldn’t say a proper farewell. I left you something to remember me by.

Wear it every day. Think of me. And time will fly.

XOXOX,

Papou

He carefully folded the letter and placed it into a big padded envelope he’d brought into the room, wedging it next to his genuine Civil War–era belt, which Corey had always admired. The one with the brass buffalo-head buckle stamped Oct 31, 1862.

Leaning over his grandson, he brushed the boy’s forehead with a kiss. “S’agapo, paithi mou,” he whispered. I love you, my child.

He could neither stay anymore nor say any more. If he had to face Corey and tell him directly, if he had to see the look on the boy’s face, it would crush him. Leaving silently was already too painful. He backed away through the door, so as not to let the boy’s sweet face from his sight until the last possible moment.

Shutting the door behind him, he quietly left.

Corey turned in his sleep toward the window. In the dim city light, a small tear glistened on his forehead, from where it had dropped.

By morning the tear would be gone.

And so would the man who had left it.